Thursday, May 06, 2010

As I wander lazily up the road today on my way to the Polling Station to mark my cross for my chosen local candidate, I have plenty of time to idle, look around and contemplate. I'm thinking how different it was for women one hundred years ago - just a whisper of time ago. My mother's birth was only a couple of years away, my grandmother was in her mid twenties and not until she was 44 years old, in 1928, did she have full and independent voting rights. 1910 was a year when courageous women were taking violent action to gain the right to vote. The Women's History Timeline on BBC presents the factual dates,Wikepedia, an interesting summary Women's Suffrage.

In a spare moment or two over the last days I've tracked down several suffragettes who had connections to the south-west (especially with Devon) and tried to collect a few relevant texts. Approximately a century ago these women were deeply involved in the then current campaign to obtain the vote for women. This piece does not pretend to cover the subject in any detail, but rather, just picks up a few names, places and begins to explore their engagement with writing and others' writing about them. I'll also point to a few relevant sites. It's a kind of Homage. If not for their courage and resolve where would today's women stand in the political order? Currently the general grievance seems to be a complaint about fewer women at the top level. 'Why not another female prime minister,?' people ask. All too many seem to take for granted their right to vote, and are shamefully ignorant of any historical slant to the current debates - and that is even with the renewed flurry of interest in politics, since 'that' now famous televised debate.

The formidable Lady Constance Georgina Bulwer-Lytton had ancestral connections to Devon through several grandparents. Her paternal Grandfather, the novelist/poet Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton, died at his winter home, Argyll Hall in Torquay in 1873; before his death Constance's parents had stayed there for a while after a diplomatic spell abroad. It's quite likely that the four year old child Constance would have been with them, although biographies of her suggest she spent her first eleven years in India. Her maternal great-grandmother was from Saltram House; she was Theresa Parker, daughter of John Parker, 1st Baron of Boringdon and his second wife Theresa Robinson. You can read about the remarkable life and work of the redoubtable Constance Lytton on many web-sites. Suffice to note here that her most proactive year was in 1910 when she spent much time in prison; her book Prisons and Prisoners was written in 1914. Her forebearers would no doubt have been intensely proud of their courageous descendant, whose mausoleum at Knebworth says

"Endowed with a celestial sense of humour, boundless sympathy, and rare musical talent, she devoted the later years of her life to the political enfranchisement of women and sacrificed her health and talents in helping to bring victory to this cause."

Here at google-newspapers you can read about the by-election in Mid-Devon in 1907/8 and how some of the key suffragettes, including Emmeline Pankhurst, were involved in active work to disrupt and influence the result, distributing slogans and speaking at meetings. In Newton Abbot things came to a head and Pankhurst was injured. This Emmeline Pankhurst biography by June Purvis tells the story.

Pankhurst's daughters Christabel and Sylvia Pankhurst, Evelina Haverfield, Vera Holme and Alison Vickers Garland all had connections with Devon. They were activists in the county, spent holidays here and Haverfield and Holme, who were lovers, bought and lived in a cottage in Brendon. There are records of letters exchanged between Holme and Haverfield and at least one poem written by Holme for Haverfield, at the Women's Library Special Collection. Alison Garland lived in Devon during part of her life, at Dousland Grange, near Yelverton. She spoke at meetings of the Central and West of England Society for Women's Suffrage, was a novelist and was acclaimed for her suffrage play 'The Better Half' .

Much more recently, Jacqueline Mulhallen, herself born in Devon, wrote and performed 'Sylvia' a play about Sylvia Pankhurst.

Of course, the correlation between suffragettes and the right for women is not always accepted and many consider that it was the respose to the actions of moderate women during the first world war, rather than the violent actions of the activists themselves that made all the difference. I'm not sure what I believe, but what is certain is that these women made the public aware of the issues in the context of a very different political arena than we have now.

Devon history

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Comment (2012)

Your blog is fascinating and the only one I am aware of that deals with the single subject of English women writers and who mostly hail from the S.W of England. Hope you will continue to post your lovely evocative photos along with all very interesting info. regarding the authors and the landscapes they wrote about and lived in. I so enjoy stopping by to see when ever you have a new posting.

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H.D.'s Sea-Thyme in the South-West

Comment

I stumbled over your blog when googling Lady Rachel Fane, as I do from time to time, having been interested in this amazing woman for the past 25 years when, like you, I found her in Tawstock Church. Sporadically I have gathered information about her, including visits to both Kent and Northampton archives, always intending one day to write her story, but as is the way of these things, never getting around to it. But anyway - as a fellow Devonian woman writer, I just wanted to say hello and to say how much I am enjoying your blog - and when your book is published I will be in the queue to buy a copy.

Jo Field

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Hello Julie, I enjoyed reading about Elizabeth Goudge on your blog. I am reading The Scent of Snow for the first time at 60, though I read Elizabeth Goudge as a child and I feel I have rediscovered her. With very best wishes, Lindy Elliott

Comment 2011

'Just wanted to express my sincere interest in “Scrapblog: a Writer from the South-West”. It's not often that one comes across a site that is so well-written and creatively expressed.'Tim Handorf, Best Colleges Online

Devon and Fiction

Devon and women poets

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No!

No!more
strokes
words
across a
horizontal
space
instead
the
shadow of
body
textual-lines
connecting
ribs
and
tissues
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a self-
forgetting
calligraphy
with unrelenting
written kisses.
No one understands the pattern of the bond.

Sidethread: Women Composers and Musicians from Devon: Miriam Hyde

The Australian composer Miriam Hyde(C.1913-2004) composed her most well known piano piece, Valley of the Rocksafter being inspired by the Devon scenery at that location. It was first published in about 1974. Was she on holiday in the county or did she live here? As yet I haven't been able to establish this - information on women and classical music is not easily obtainable.

Maude Valerie White

Maude Valerie White was during her lifetime one of the country's foremost female composers - and was especially renowned for her many songs (Groves called her song (words by Shelley) 'My Soul is an Enchanted Boat' "one of the best in the language"). White is more or less forgotten now except for one or two recent performances: Felicity Lott has for instance performed several of her songs, includingSo We'll go No More a Roving on this CD.White was born in France but apparently lived in Torquay at some time during her life and began her musical training there. She evidently had a remarkable life and career and gave an account of it in her book Memories and Friends; see this review of memories of a cheerful musician in a contemporary New York Times gives an account of her book.

Caroline Orger-Reinagle

Caroline Orger-Reinagle died in Tiverton in 1892. As yet I have found no more information about her time in Devon except that she probably lived at 15 Twyford Place (and was a member of the Shelley Society in 1887/8). Born in London in 1817 the pianist-composer spent much of her life in Oxford with her husband, the organist and teacher Alexander Reinagle. Works written under her married name appear not to have survived: these included a cello sonata and 2 piano quartets. However some music composed under her maiden name, Caroline Orger, was published: a piano sonata in A, opus 6 (1850?); some songs - including 3 settings of Adelaide Procter and 4 of Robert Browning; her Tarentella for piano appears to have been her most popular work. You can find here bits of info re some of these works and her treatise on piano playing.

Harriet Abrams

Harriet Abrams (1758-1821), singer and composer. From 1781 for ten years, she was a leading London soloist and appeared amongst others, in the Concerts of Ancient Music. Several of her sisters also sang; one of them, Theodosia, sang with Harriet and they became well-known as aduo (see a print of them performing here)I don't know when she moved to Devon but she died at her home The Braddons, in South Hill, Torquay, in November 1849 and was buried at St Saviour, Tormoham, Devon on 8 November. that year. As yet I haven't found out about her compositions.

The writer Theodosia Garrow, the daughter of Theodosia Abrams also lived at The Braddons, with her parents.

Info. on Abrams is from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Thelma Reiss

The cellist Thelma Reiss was born in Plymouth, in 1906. She made her debut with the pianist Joan Black at the Wigmore Hall in 1930. and was then invited to play Elgar Cello concerto at a Promenade Concert. She followed an international career and was at the time acclaimed as one of the foremost women cellists, performing with Myra Hess and broadcasting with the BBC. During the war she played at factories and hospitals. Playing a repertoire from Back to Debussy she was apparently known for her stylish and brilliant playing; but this was enhanced by her projection of a wonderful warm rapport and this endeared her to her audiences. She was forced to retire in 1955 because of a debilitating illness.

Helen Glatz

Helen Glatz (1908-64) wrote an account of her life and career which was published in The Contemporary Music Review, in 1994. Having been a "penniless refugee" in Hungary during the second world war, she escaped to England with her husband just after the end of the war. Ending up in Devon at Dartington the composer, understandably, found she was now in "absolute heaven on earth". Whilst living and teaching at Dartington Glatz had commissions for many compositions of all kinds. One of these wasThe Dartington Cyclea work which she set to poetry about Dartington's history, written by Anne Born.